


Surprise

by Deannie



Series: Two Gentlemen of Atlantis [5]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-06
Updated: 2006-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-13 08:46:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/822351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It could be that Radek's not the mouse Rodney thought he was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surprise

**Author's Note:**

> _Takes place in the week after_ A Great Mystery, _between "Rising" and "Hide and Seek"_  
> 

"Okay," Rodney began, raising his voice in such a way that the entire lab fell silent, though he kept his focus on the small Korean scientist before him. "Let me explain this again--feel free to translate it into whatever language makes you comfortable." His voice hardened. "Shut up. Do your work. Write your reports-- _in English_ \--" he added, glaring at the French biologist who'd written his last report in a dizzying combination of French and German-- "and don't whine about the project you've been assigned to work on." He crossed his arms, marveling at the collective idiocy. "That's your job. _My_ job is to assign those projects, and I don't do it frivolously." He lowered his voice and addressed Soo Ji more personally. "Get back to the water reclamation plant and make it work."  


She shook slightly, and he again cursed faint-hearted scientists. "But Dr. Zelenka--"  


Rodney nodded in irritation. "Yes, Dr. Zelenka. Well, Zelenka's not here right now and won't be here next week, but we'll still need fresh water, won't we?"  


Soo looked on the verge of tears now, and Rodney suppressed a sigh. With a strength he wouldn't have thought she had in her, she blurted out, "But he was in charge of the project! How will I know exactly what needs to be done?"  


She was kidding, right? "You could, I don't know, look at his _notes_!?"  


"But they are all in--"  


"Czech," he cut in impatiently. "Yes, fine. He has a comm., doesn't he?" How did this woman ever make it onto the team? "Call him."  


Soo nodded meekly and all but ran away from him, and Rodney sat back down, sighing. Zelika was hardly a genius, was he? Surely he shouldn't have been this hard to replace for a couple of weeks.  


The rest of the lab continued to do their work--or at least pretend to--and Rodney ignored them all, turning back to the project he’d been working on before he was so rudely interrupted. This Ancient code wasn’t going to translate itself….  


* * * * * *  


It was another five hours before he felt he was far enough along to visit the commissary and grab something more substantial than a Power Bar. He’d made some headway, now that the rest of them were finally leaving him alone, and he was actually feeling quite good about the whole project. They might just make a real city out of this city after all.  


He’d just taken his first bite of what they were choosing to call lasagna today when Carson Beckett sat down across the table from him, an angry look in his eyes.  


”Rodney,” he said curtly.  


”Carson?” Rodney thought his response was pretty mild, actually, given Beckett’s rude entrance.  


”I believe I told you that Dr. Zelenka needed _rest_ , did I not?”  


Rodney just looked at him for a moment. “Yes. And?”  


Carson snorted in irritation. “And he’s not going to get it if you people are calling him every five minutes.”  


Okay. “What possible reason would I have to call him?” Rodney wanted to know. “He’s convalescing. That’s what you told me to let him do, so I’m letting him do it.”  


”Obviously, not,” Carson snapped back. “He was in my medical unit for twenty minutes for a check of his hand, and in that time he received three calls from--"  


”Soo Ji,” Rodney finished for him, dropping his fork to his tray. “Why is it that no one around here seems to be able to do their job?”  


”Perhaps because _you_ have been scaring the living daylights out of all of them, Rodney.” Carson sighed. Oh come on! Carson was making him out to be some kind of monster! “Is it at all possible for you to make sure that Radek gets a bit of a rest?”  


”Well he doesn’t _have_ to answer them!” Rodney replied petulantly.  


Carson gave a derisive laugh at that. “Aye, I suppose not. He could probably just ignore the fact that you threatened a member of his staff when all she was trying to do was her job.”  


Rodney pushed back from the table, defensive. “I didn’t threaten anyone! I _may_ have pointed out to Soo that if she didn’t get the bilge subroutine at the water reclamation plant working, we might all be _drinking_ bilge by Friday, but…” His defense petered out under Carson’s withering glare. “Fine. I’ll talk to her, all right? I’ll talk to _him_.”  


”That you will,” Carson affirmed sharply. “And right now.”  


Rodney looked wistfully at his barely touched lunch. “But--"  


Carson pointed toward the door. “Now, Rodney.”  


”And you call _me_ threatening?” Rodney asked in a murmur as he made for the door. Zemenka’s quarters were on the way to the reclamation plant. Might as well start with him. If the idiot would just ignore his calls like everyone else around here, Carson wouldn’t have any reason to whine at Rodney....  


   


”Come in, please.”  


Zemenka _did_ sound tired. Rodney opened the door to the Czech’s quarters and looked at the man sitting up on the bed, a laptop perched on his lap. Zemenka was typing slowly with his good hand, his eyes squinting painfully at the screen before him. He looked up, seeming surprised at Rodney’s entrance.  


”Dr. McKay,” he greeted him questioningly.  


”Carson told me to tell you to stop answering your comm.,” Rodney blurted out. He gestured to the computer. “And what are you working on? You’re not supposed to be working at all, you know?” He grumbled to himself, “You’re getting me in trouble.”  


The man on the bed gave the silence a minute to get uncomfortable before he closed the laptop. “Was working on the bilge tanks,” he said, again in that tired, quiet voice. “Soo Ji feels--"  


”Soo Ji needs to learn to figure it out herself,” Rodney cut in rudely. Zemenka picked up the laptop with his good hand, but it was shaking as he tried to move it, and Rodney grabbed it away with a groan for the idiocy and placed it carefully on the bedside table. Laptops didn’t grow on trees out here, after all. Wasn’t like they could requisition another one from Earth, was it?  


Zemenka answered him in a stronger voice. “Soo Ji is simply trying to complete task _you_ set before her.”  


Rodney groaned again. A band of morons. That’s what he’d brought with him. “If you could just write your notes out in _English_ \--“  


”And _that_ is not her fault, either. She is doing the best she can.”  


Rodney looked up at the blatantly rude tone. He’d never heard Zemenka talk like that. He didn’t know Zemenka _could_ talk like that!  


Which made it even harder for Rodney to admit that the Czech had a point.  


”All right, so she’s not completely--"  


”No, she is not, Dr. McKay,” the other man bit in. “She is best programmer I have on my team.”  


” _Your_ team!?” Rodney replied incredulously. “Now wait a minute--"  


Zemenka slashed the air with his good hand. “Is my project. My team. And I would ask you do not bother them when they are trying to work.”  


Rodney was speechless. Completely speechless. Even _Grodin_ didn’t talk to him like that! Who was the lead scientist around here, anyway?  


The rude little man grabbed his computer back from its place on the table and opened it carefully with his good hand. He began typing away again before he even bothered to look up at Rodney’s slackjawed face. “Leave now, please. I have work to do.”  


That did it. “You’re not supposed to be working at all!” Rodney all but shouted. “That was why I came in here in the first place--not to get yelled at by you, too!”  


Zemenka fixed him with a glare that showed more backbone than Rodney had thought the guy had. “Leave my people to do their work, and I will do same, yes?”  


Rodney wanted to say something to that. He really did. But...  


Who gave this guy an attitude? Rodney was sure the scientist hadn’t been this rude before.  


And again, he had a point, which only served to _really_ piss McKay off. It pissed him off and he couldn’t even figure out how to be unreasonable in the face of that glare.  


”Fine,” he finally said, as rudely as he could. “But if Beckett finds you working again, you’d better not send him to me.” He stormed out before Zemenka could say anything more.  


He just couldn’t think of anything else to do.  


* * * * * * *  


At twenty-two-thirty, Atlantis Standard Time, Soo Ji stood before Rodney, shaking again. He turned away from the Ancient translation he was running and stared at her.  


”Well?” he asked sharply. He was tired. He was tired and grumpy and _hungry_ and still pissed off at that damn Czech.  


She tried to straighten up and act like a professional, but it just made her look like she’d eaten bad fish. “The bilge purge is in process,” she announced timidly. “The entire reclamation plant should be online by tomorrow morning.”  


Rodney actually smiled. A little--wouldn't do to make her think he forgave her for her incompetence this morning. “It’s about time. So we’ll all be bathing in clean water.” He cast a glare at the back of the Belgian scientist. The man had obviously never _seen_ a bar of soap, much less used one. “Those of us that bathe at all.”  


Soo Ji was still standing there.  


”And?” Rodney asked. Hadn’t she said what she needed to say already?  


”Dr. Zelenka wanted me to tell you that he needs the power grid in section four restarted to accommodate the new interface he installed.”  


The interface _he_ installed. Of course--because he just went ahead and kept on working today, even when Rodney was absolutely sure he’d made it clear that he should stop.  


Somehow, that made Rodney feel... well, not proud, of course, because Zemeka was an idiot for trying to program one-handed _and_ on his sick bed…  


But it did show an initiative Rodney hadn’t thought to see in the guy, didn’t it?  


…And still, Soo Ji stood there.  


”Fine. We’ll restart grid four. You gave me his message,” he told her curtly. “Go away.”  


She ran. Which was only marginally better than her standing there shaking, but he’d take it. He called up to Grodin in the control room to let him know about the shutdown and restarted grid four, staring at the screen until the power read nominal.  


When the new interface came up, he took a long look before starting to debug it. It was good: clean, efficient… He scrolled through the code carefully.... One error... two.... Not bad for 3000 lines of code.  


Of course he’d have to take Zemeka to task for the errors. Later. If he tore into the guy now, Carson would just order him to be nice, and he hated that….  


He sat back, closing the debug program, and stared at his wallpaper. Huh. Zemeka surprised him today--not that he liked surprises, because in his experience they were normally things like “Welcome to your new galaxy. Did we mention we had life-sucking aliens?” But this one was encouraging. Zemeka had fire, astonishingly enough.  


And he’d stood up for his people, regardless of how incompetent they were. That showed some leadership ability.... And really, Soo Ji wasn’t incompetent so much as mouse-like.  


_One mouse wouldn’t hurt...._  


Apparently, Zemeka wasn’t a mouse at all, was he? Which just meant, Rodney told himself, as he turned back to his work, popping the last of his Power Bar into his mouth, that he’d been an amazing judge of character when he’d picked the Czech for his science team.  


Now if he could just get the guy to write his notes in English....  


* * * * * *  
The End  



End file.
